15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

Wall shear stress distribution in a turbulent channel flow

Omid Amili1, Julio Soria2
1: Laboratory for Turbulence Research in Aerospace and Combustion, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering, Monash University, VIC 3800, AUSTRALIA
omid.amili@eng.monash.edu.au
2: Laboratory for Turbulence Research in Aerospace and Combustion, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering, Monash University, VIC 3800, AUSTRALIA
julio.soria@eng.monash.edu.au

Abstract A film-based wall shear stress sensor has been used to measure dynamic wall shear stress
distribution in a turbulent channel flow. The sensor which used to directly measure the wall shear stress
consists of mounting a thin flexible film on the solid surface. The sensor is made of a homogeneous,
isotropic, and incompressible material. The geometry and mechanical properties of the film are measured,
and particles with the nominal size of 11 m in diameter are embedded on the films surface to act as
markers. An optical technique is used to measure the in-plane film deformation caused by the flow. The film
has typically deflection of less than 2% of the material thickness under maximum loading. The sensor
sensitivity can be adjusted by changing the thickness of the layer or the shear modulus of the films material.
For this study, a film with the shear modulus of 80 Pa and 2 mm in thickness was used. The sensor is
statically calibrated by applying a constant shear stress to the top surface of the film showing an excellent
linear stress-strain relationship. The dynamic response of the sensor has been measured using a dynamic
calibration apparatus and procedure developed specifically for this purpose. The sensor transfer function
shows a low-pass behavior. Measurements have been performed in a fully developed turbulent channel flow
at the Reynolds number of 130,000 based on the bulk velocity and channel full height. The results, which are
compared with the available results in the literature, show the capacity of the technique to dynamically
measure wall shear stress over an extended area of the surface. Distribution measurement of the fluctuating
wall shear stress reveals the imprint of small-scale hairpins or counter-rotating streamwise vortex pairs
existing in the near-wall region.

1. Introduction
In turbulence research, to understand the dynamics of the near wall momentum transfer, high spatial
resolution measurements of dynamic wall shear stress distribution are needed. The measurements
should be performed in a non-intrusive way that does not affect the flow field itself. In addition, the
measurement field of view should be extensive enough to detect the largest turbulent structures. It is
also important that measurements can detect a wide range of scales of the shear stress fluctuations.
Furthermore, it is desired that the shear stress measuring techniques possess an adequate dynamic
bandwidth to detect all frequency contents usually in the range of a few kHz depending on the fluid
and flow properties. As a result, determination of wall shear stress using a sensor which fulfills
these characteristics is a critical and challenging task.
Due to the high demand on the ability to measure the magnitude, direction, and distribution of wall
shear stress, a large number of studies have been performed. The shear stress measurement
techniques are usually divided into direct and indirect methods (Naughton and Sheplak, 2002;
Fernholz et al, 1996). The large group of indirect shear stress measuring techniques includes the
obstacle-in-flow methods, velocity profile measurement, and application of heat or mass transfer
analogies. On the other hand, the small group of direct skin friction measuring techniques currently
available is mostly based on a floating element which responds to the force applied by the fluid on
the element. Direct measuring methods are preferable as they directly measure the applied force by
the fluid with no assumption of the flow field. However, they are accompanied with different errors
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

and limitations which are well descried in Winter (1977) and Haritonidis (1989). Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology has removed many of the limitations existing in
conventional mechanical fabrications (Schmidt et al, 1988; Lofdahl and Gad-el Hak, 1999; Sheplak
et al, 2004). However, the nature of the sensors is not suitable for unclean environments and they
also need further development to become standard and reliable measuring tools (Naughton and
Sheplak, 2002).
Among different developed techniques, the thin-oil-film and liquid-crystal-coating techniques
which are quasi-direct means of shear stress measurement are able to determine stress distribution.
Thin-oil-film techniques which have been widely used for the last two decades are based on the
behavior of the oil film under shear loading. The oil thinning rate responds to changes of shear
stress with a bandwidth in the 10 kHz range (Naughton and Brown, 1999). The major uncertainty
arising from the difficulty of precisely measuring the oil viscosity was reported within 4% by
Fernholz et al (1996) and was evaluated less than 2.4% in the range of investigated shear stress by
Zanoun et al (2003). In liquid-crystal technique, the temporal resolution of measuring the twodimensional wall shear stress distribution is in the range of a few kHz (Fujisawa et al, 2003).
Although it was introduced more than three decades ago, different problems including measurement
uncertainty of 5% in the shear stress magnitude have made the technique unsuitable for many
turbulent flow applications (Naughton and Sheplak, 2002).
A novel type of sensor which has the potential to measure the mean and fluctuating wall shear stress
distribution using a flexible material has been proposed in recent years. Micro-pillar shear stress
sensor (MPS3), able to measure dynamic wall shear stress in turbulent flows, is based on flexible
micro-pillars immersing in the viscous sublayer (Grosse and Schroder, 2008a,b). Depending on the
pillar dimensions and mechanical properties, length scales better than 50 m and time scales in the
range of a few kHz can be resolved. The sensor length to diameter ratio is between 15 and 25 and
the Youngs modulus is in the order of a few MPa. The optical detection and array of micro pillars
allow the high spatial resolution determination of the two-dimensional shear stress (Grosse, 2008).
The surface shear sensitive film (S3F) is another sensor which takes advantage of using a linear
elastic material. This technique was first introduced by Tarasov and Orlov in the early 1990s as a
direct method for measuring wall shear stress (cited in Tarasov et al (1997)). A thin elastomer layer
is mounted on the solid surface subjected to a flow field and its resulting viscous shear stress is
determined using Hookes law from the film deformation. The experimental setup similar to the
pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique includes a surface or volume-distributed transducer, a light
source, and an image and data acquisition system (Fonov et al, 2006a,b, 2007). However, unlike
PSP which can only be used in air, this technique can be used in most fluids since it does not
depend on oxygen quenching. McQuilling et al (2008) and Crafton et al (2008) claimed sensor
fabrication with frequency response up to 1 kHz with the shear modulus ranging from 30 Pa to a
few hundred kPa. In these studies, the film response estimation is based on finite element modeling
of the film under unit normal and tangential applied loads. McQuilling et al (2008) verified the
technique using an oil film shear stress measurement in the range of 0.25 to 1.5 Pa and observed a
difference of 0.25-0.33 Pa. Crafton et al (2008) estimated the accuracy in the tangential
displacement detection of 0.05 px (equivalent to 0.3 m) corresponding to an error of 25 Pa in the
shear stress measurements in the range of 50 to 500 Pa.
The present study is aimed at measuring dynamic wall shear stress in a turbulent channel flow using
an in-house developed film-based shear stress sensor at the Laboratory for Turbulence Research in
Aerospace and Combustion (LTRAC) at Monash University. The feasibility of the technique
concept to detect mean wall shear stress has been demonstrated by developing and applying the
sensor to the same flow facility at Reynolds numbers in the range of 90,000-130,000 based on the
bulk velocity and channel full height (Amili et al, 2009; Amili and Soria, 2009; Amili and Soria,
2010). A brief description of the sensor, film fabrication, static and dynamic calibration, and flow
facility is given here. More detailed information can be found in the cited works. The sensor
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

capability of dynamically detecting wall shear stress has been assessed by measuring instantaneous
wall shear stress distribution.

2. Sensor description
The film-based shear stress sensor technique is based on mounting a thin layer film made of an
elastic material on the solid surface of the model or the test section of the flow facility. The elastic
layer is created by forming the material at room temperature into a flat rectangular cavity with a
smooth surface made of glass as fabricated in the study by Amili et al (2009) and Amili and Soria
(2010). The cavity which is machined into a flat plate was designed to fit into the floor of the wind
tunnel test section. Depending on the experimental condition, the thickness of the film can be
adjusted between 0.5 and 3 mm by varying the cavity depth. The geometry and mechanical
properties of the flexible material were accurately measured. Immediately after the film formation,
11 m diameter Potters spherical particles acting as markers are embedded on the films top surface
flush with that surface to minimize the roughness. An optical technique is used to measure the film
deformation caused by the flow field.
The film is formed from a material which satisfies the linear elastic solid characteristics within the
desired range of operation: the deformations are very small; the relationship between applied loads
and deformations is linear; upon removal of applied loading, deformations are completely removed;
the loading rate has no effect on deformations. Owing to the fact that the film layer is made of a
liquid-based elastic material, it is deformed when loading under incompressibility condition and
returns to its initial shape after the load is removed. In addition, since the film used for the sensor is
homogeneous and isotropic, the shear modulus is independent of the location and direction.
The film deformation is measured using the images of the film while loaded with respect to its
initial unloaded condition. Then, the shear stress distribution over the film is determined by
implementing the shear stress-strain relationship which is based on linear continuum mechanics
(Lai et al, 1993). More information about the governing equations can be found in Amili et al
(2009). The film deformation is a function of the applied load, films shear modulus, and thickness.
The sensor geometry and mechanical properties are carefully selected so that the deformation does
not exceed more than 2% of the films thickness under maximum predicted flow loading. In
addition, the sensor sensitivity can be adjusted by changing these parameters based on the estimated
shear stress range to be measured. An important advantage of this film-based technique is that
depending on the employed material, it is applicable to air, water, or any environment where the
film is not chemically or physically modified by the working fluid.
In this study we are only concerned with measuring the tangential shear stress and not the surface
pressure, hence only the in-plane strain deformation of the film is required. The 2D in-plane film
deformation is measured by means of a 2C-2D cross correlation PIV algorithm (Soria, 1998).

3. Sensor calibration
3.1. Static Calibration
The static calibration of the sensor involves applying a constant shear load on the films surface and
measuring the film deformation under different loading conditions. Detailed information about the
static calibration stage and the procedure can be found in Amili et al (2010). All the associated
errors in the calibration step including specifying the loading angle, mass of the load, load contact
area, and the cross-correlation resolvable displacement have been considered and the overall
uncertainty of measuring shear modulus based on the 95% level of confidence is estimated to be
better than 2% of the measured modulus for G<3000 Pa. The measurement of the shear modulus
curve for the sensor used in this experiment is shown in Figure 1a.

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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

Figure 1a shows excellent linear behavior with a negligible hysteresis effect for the films developed
at our laboratory. The non-zero intercept, which pre-loading, hysteresis or any other bias error in the
measurement system may contribute to, falls within the overall measurement uncertainty. The shear
modulus is determined from the linear least squares fit to the measured shear stress-strain
relationship. The Measurements of the shear modulus in three arbitrary directions yields similar
values within the measurement uncertainty confirming the isotropic assumption. In a similar way,
performance of the static calibration at different arbitrary locations of the film proves that the
homogeneous assumption is true. To date, sensors with the shear modulus between 50 Pa and 3000
Pa have been developed which possess similar behavior to the sensor shown in Figure 1a.
Owing to the fact that the sensor is planned to be applied to turbulent shear flows, it is important to
conduct the calibration in the range of expected wall shear stress values. As a result, calibration is
carried out in the range of expected mean wall shear stress considering the fluctuations. From the
probability density function of the wall shear stress or near wall velocity fluctuations in turbulent
flows reported in the literature (such as Colella and Keith (2003); Monty et al (2007)), fluctuations
reaching up to four times the mean value can be expected. However, a static calibration curve as
shown in Figure 1a with a larger range of the applied loading shows in fact that the material
behaves linearly over a larger range of deformations. Although the calibration is statically
conducted, a constant shear modulus can be inferred at low loading rates.
3.2. Dynamic calibration
The effect of the loading rate on the sensor behavior was investigated via transfer functions
obtained using a dynamic calibration apparatus and procedure developed for this specific purpose.
The setup consists of an electro-magnetic vibration exciter (B&K type 4809) capable of producing
vibrations in the range of 10 Hz to 20 kHz driven by a B&K power amplifier. A HP 33120A
function generator is used as a high fidelity signal input source and loading is applied via a known
mass placed on the top surface of the film. A force transducer, and an accelerometer both from
B&K with the sensitivity of 110 mV/N and 10 mV/ms-2 respectively are used to measure the
applied force and corresponding acceleration of the mass. These signals are amplified and then
recorded by means of a computer using an A/D converter. In case of forcing with white noise, a
low-pass filter (at 2 kHz) is used to create the desired frequency bandwidth. A sample length of
600,000 for the signals is recorded at 16 kHz rate to ensure a high enough temporal resolution.
Finding the transfer function to indicate the relation between the input force and the output film
displacement consists of decomposing the film response into its frequency contents and determining
the oscillation amplitudes using Fourier analysis. As a result, the amplitude of the film oscillation,
normalized by a reference amplitude, is determined in terms of frequency. It is worth noting that the
effective mass applied to the film has been accurately measured via a no-film experiment first.
The dynamic calibration was conducted for different sensors developed in our laboratory made of
different materials and different thicknesses. Figure 1b shows the transfer function for the sensor
used for this experiment. The transfer function shows low-pass filter behavior with the cut-off
frequency of 120 Hz. The bandwidth calculation is based on the frequency where the sensor gain
falls to -3 dB. In the dynamic calibration, the point should be highlighted that all measurements
have been performed in air and for sensor application in different flow facilities, there is a need for
calibration in the same working fluid. It is expected that sensors show more damped behavior in
water because of the damping nature of the fluid.
For an accurate measurement of the instantaneous wall shear stress, it is important that the sensor
does not show a gain greater than 1 (i.e. a resonant frequency) in the expected range of frequencies
that may exist in the wall shear stress signal. Therefore, selection of a suitable sensor with a proper
shear modulus and thickness is made based on the working fluid and flow properties. The effect of
geometry and shear modulus of the film on the frequency response of the sensor has been
considered. To date, developed sensors in our lab have low-pass filter behavior with the cut-off
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

frequency up to 240 Hz. The measurements by Grosse (2008) in a turbulent duct and pipe flow
show that the highest frequencies of the wall shear stress fluctuations in the streamwise direction
are less than 500 Hz for comparable Reynolds numbers to this study. This indicates that the sensors
developed until now in our laboratory are not able to dynamically detect all significant frequencies
contained in the instantaneous wall shear stress signal. While a sensor with low-pass filter behavior
has been developed and implemented, further development of a sensor with an increased bandwidth
is in progress. It is worth mentioning that to avoid any possible errors caused by changes of the
films mechanical properties or thickness, calibration tests were performed before and after the wall
shear stress measurement.

(a)

(b)

Figure 1. The shear stress-strain curve in a static calibration for the film-based shear stress sensor with the thickness of
2 mm. The measurement accuracy is estimated to be better than 0.035 Pa for the applied shear stress and 1.7104 Rad
for the shear strain, (a). The dynamic transfer function for the sensor with the cut-off frequency of 120 Hz, (b).

4. Experimental setup
4.1. Flow facility
Wall shear stress measurements were performed in the open-circuit wind tunnel facility located in
the Laboratory for Turbulence Research in Aerospace and Combustion (LTRAC) at Monash
University. The flow in the facility is generated by a three-phase 5.5 KW electrical motor coupled
with an in-line centrifugal blower. The flow rate is accurately controlled by adjusting the motor
rotational speed by means of a motor controller. The working section is 4.6 m long, 1 m wide, with
the aspect ratio of 9.75:1. The channel has a large enough aspect ratio which ensures that secondary
flows in the channel corners do not affect the mean streamwise velocity profile and the turbulent
fluctuations. The sensor is flush mounted on the lower wall of the test section at a position
approximately 41 channel height downstream of the test section entrance. The film was formed into
a cavity with dimensions of 10070 mm and depth of 1 mm using a perspex plate with dimensions
of 320320 mm. The plate was mounted flush with the tunnel wall to prevent any disturbance to the
local flow field. The experiment was conducted at the Reynolds number of 130,000 based on the
bulk flow velocity and the channel full height. At this Reynolds number, based on the PIV
measurements along the streamwise-wall normal plane, the bulk velocity is 18.55 m/s. The
turbulence intensity at the centerline of the channel is approximately 1.7%.
4.2. Optical setup
Deformation of the film was imaged at 1 KHz using an 8-bit Motion Pro X3 high speed camera at
full CCD size of 12801024 px in combination with a 200 mm Nikkon Micro-Nikkor lens. The Fstop of 4 was selected to reduce the depth of field and an array of LEDs was used for particle
illumination. It is worth noting that to remove any possible rigid-body motion of the sensor caused
by vibrations of the wind tunnel, a reference pattern attached to the bottom surface of the sensor
plate was simultaneously recorded. In order to image the reference pattern with the same recording
system, a combination of mirrors and prisms were used to split the field of view. As a result, a
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

narrow strip of the CCD with the approximate size of 2561024 px was dedicated for this purpose
and the rest was used for the shear stress measurement. Those
Y movements were subtracted from the
displacement of the tracer particles on the films surface to measure the films deflection under flow
loading. Firstly, particle positions at no-flow condition were recorded as a reference, and then 3270
images at flow-on state were taken. The sensor used for the experiment has the shear modulus of 80
Pa and thickness of 2 mm. The schematic of the sensor and imaging system is illustrated in Figure
2. The measurements have been performed at T=20.
Film-based
shear stress
sensor

flow
z

tunnel floor

reference
pattern

mirror
prisms
mirror
camera

Figure 2. The schematic of the experimental setup for the shear stress measurement.

5. Wall shear stress measurements

The multi-grid cross-correlation digital particle image velocimetry (MCCDPIV) algorithm
developed by Soria (1996, 1998) was used to measure the instantaneous wall shear stress
distribution. Multi-passing with the final interrogation window size of 3232 px with the step size
of 16 px at a high sub-pixel accuracy using 2D Gaussian peak-fitting function enables
measurements with a high dynamic range. This leads to a vector spacing of 185 m corresponding
to 10.2 wall units using the imaging resolution of 11.66 m/px. The field of view is 11.411.4 mm
which is equal to 630630 wall units.
5.1. Mean wall shear stress
The mean film deformation, wall shear stress, friction velocity, and skin friction coefficient have
been measured at six Reynolds numbers, ReH=90,000-130,000 (Amili et al, 2010). The mean wall
shear stress calculation is based on the time-average and also the spatial-average of the stress over
the film located in the entire field of view. The mean stress measurements are in good agreement
with indirect measurements by means of a logarithmic fit to the mean streamwise velocity profile
obtained from PIV experiments and application of the Clauser method (Amili et al, 2010). The
measured skin friction compares favorably with the measurements by Zanoun et al (2009),
Christensen (2001), Monty (2005) and also the logarithmic skin friction relation by Zanoun et al
(2007).
In this study, the mean film deflection is approximately 1.5 pixel corresponding to ~1% of the film
thickness. The mean wall shear stress and friction velocity are estimated to be 0.827 Pa and 823
mm/s respectively. The accuracy of the shear stress measurements is determined by the sub-pixel
accuracy of the cross-correlation algorithm and the accuracy of the shear modulus determination
which has been assessed in section 3. The uncertainty of measuring wall shear stress based on the
95% level of confidence is estimated to be better than 2.5% of the measured stress for <1 Pa. It is
worth noting that the potential of a main bias error has already been removed by measuring the
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

simultaneous measurements of the rigid-body motion of the sensor. The relative movement of the
sensor with respect to the camera can cause a DC error. As a result, it is independent of the applied
loading during the experiments and consequently has a greater effect on smaller displacements.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 3. Example results of the instantaneous fluctuating wall shear stress distribution using a film-based shear stress
sensor. The contours indicate the strength of the streamwise fluctuating wall shear stress, x/x,rms in (a) and (c), and
spanwise fluctuating wall shear stress, z/z,rms in (b) and (d). The field of view is normalized using the friction velocity.

5.2. Two-dimensional wall shear stress distribution

Two example fields of the instantaneous wall shear stress fluctuation distribution are shown in
Figure 3. The vector field represents the instantaneous wall shear stress fluctuations. The contours
indicate the normalized streamwise fluctuating wall shear stress, x/x,rms (left) and spanwise
fluctuating wall shear stress, z/z,rms (right). The sensor detects the existence of low- and highshear regions aligned in the streamwise direction. By measuring the local wall shear stress
distribution, the imprint of small-scale hairpins or counter-rotating streamwise vortex pairs existing
in near-wall region can be captured. These coherent structures reported in the inner layer (Adrian
(2007); Herpin et at (2008); Jimenez et al (2004)) contribute to the evolution of the fluctuating
shear stress on the surface. The instantaneous wall shear stress fluctuation distribution is helpful to
reveal the width of the coherent motions and their spacing.
5.3. Two-point correlations
In addition to the qualitative presentation of the fluctuating wall shear stress distribution shown in
section 5.2, two-point correlations of the fluctuations shows some of the structures characteristics.
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

The coherent motions dominate the two-point correlations of the streamwise and spanwise wall
shear stress fluctuations. Figure 4 shows the two-point correlation of the streamwise wall shear
stress fluctuations, Rxx at the wall. Elongated positive correlation region in the streamwise
direction is accompanied by negative correlation behavior at spanwise sides.

Figure 4. Contour map of the two-point correlation of the streamwise wall shear stress fluctuations, Rx x(x+,z+).

The two-point correlations of the streamwise wall shear stress fluctuations at z+=0 and at x+=0
are shown in Figure 5a and 5b respectively. While a smooth decay in the correlation is observed in
the streamwise direction, a strong change in correlations sign in the spanwise direction is indicated.
This supports the findings in pipes, channels, and boundary layers (Hutchins and Marusic, (2007);
Monty et al (2007); Jeon et al (1999)). In Figure 5b, the spanwise extent of the positive correlation
provides the average width of the coherent structures in the near wall region. This characteristic
width of eddies is a function of the Reynolds number and distance from the wall. At the wall, this
scale is in the order of 100z+. It is reported that it increases as wall distance increases
(Chernyshenko and Baig (2005); Monty et al (2007)). Furthermore, at a fixed distance from the
wall, the width scale increases with increasing in Reynolds number (Monty et al, 2007). Based on
the using a correlation threshold of 0.05, the width scale of 244 + is estimated (Re=2730).

(a)

(b)

(d)

(c)

Figure 5. The two-point correlations of the streamwise wall shear stress fluctuations in the streamwise direction,
Rxx(z+=0), (a) and in the spanwise direction, Rxx(x+=0), (b). The two-point correlations of the spanwise wall
shear stress fluctuations in the streamwise direction, Rzz(z+=0), (c) and in the spanwise direction, Rzz(x+=0), (d).
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

In addition, the two-point correlations of the spanwise wall shear stress fluctuations in the
streamwise and spanwise directions are shown in Figure 4c and 4d respectively. In Figure 5c, a
stronger decay in the correlation coefficient of Rzz(x+) than Rxx(x+) is observed. The
spanwise two-point correlations of the streamwise and spanwise wall shear stress fluctuations with
outer scaling are shown in Figure 6a and 6b for comparison with other wall shear stress estimations
found in the literature. In spite of the fact that the qualitative behavior of the correlations is similar,
good collapse can be seen only for z/H>0.05.

(a)

(b)

Figure 6. Spanwise two-point correlations of the streamwise wall shear stress fluctuations Rxx(x=0), (a) and the
spanwise wall shear stress fluctuations, Rzz(x=0), (b). The length scale is normalized using the channel full height,
H.

5.4. Probability density functions

The PDFs of the normalized streamwise and spanwise wall shear stress fluctuations are presented in
Figure 7a and 7b respectively. The probability density functions are scaled in a way that the integral
of the PDF by x/x,rms (or z/z,rms) over the range of the fluctuations be 1. The skewness and the
flatness of the streamwise shear stress fluctuations are calculated as S=0.21 and F=3.42
respectively. While the flatness is in good agreement with the findings of Colella and Keith (2003),
and Sheng et al (2008), the fluctuations are less skewed. In the cited works, a longer positive tail for
the streamwise PDFs, indicating more frequent positive fluctuations, is reported. However,
measurements by Herpin et at (2008) shows that the streamwise velocity fluctuations near the wall
(y+<25) are not skewed. The spanwise wall shear stress fluctuations, shown in Figure 7b, exhibit a
symmetric behavior. The skewness and the flatness of the Gaussian-like behavior of the spanwise
fluctuations are estimated as S=0.01 and F=4.92 which are in the range of cited works.

(a)

(b)

Figure 7. Probability density functions of the normalized streamwise wall shear stress fluctuations, (a) and spanwise
wall shear stress fluctuations, (b).

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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

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6. Conclusions
Instantaneous wall shear stress distribution in a fully developed turbulent channel flow using a filmbased sensor has been measured. The wall shear stress sensor with the working principle based on
the deformation of a thin elastic film has been developed and investigated. The advantage of this
non-intrusive technique is the ability to measure dynamic shear stress distribution based on the
evaluated dynamic response measured and demonstrated here. The technique is applicable to air or
water and its sensitivity can be tuned for different flow conditions by using an available wide range
of thickness and shear modulus. The technique allows high-spatial resolution measurements of wall
shear stress with an uncertainty better than 2.5% of the measured stress for <1 Pa.
The sensor shows the existence of low- and high-shear regions aligned in the streamwise direction.
Measurement of the fluctuating wall shear stress distribution reveals the imprint of small-scale
hairpins or counter-rotating streamwise vortex pairs existing in near-wall region. The spanwise
extent of the positive two-point correlation of the streamwise fluctuations provides the average
width of 244 + for the near-wall coherent structures.
Acknowledgements The financial support to conduct this research by the Australian Research
Council is gratefully acknowledged. In addition, O. Amili has been supported by the scholarships
provided by the Monash Research Graduate School while undertaking this research.

7. References
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Fonov SD, Jones EG, Crafton JW, Goss LP, Fonov VS (2007) Measurements of non-steady
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15th Int Symp on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics

Lisbon, Portugal, 05-08 July, 2010

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